


Full Circle

by saisei



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s05e07 Strange Frequencies, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 13:10:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5128817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saisei/pseuds/saisei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Stiles is supposed to be in high school in a whole different country, and Derek knows riddles; he knows </i>When is a Stiles not a Stiles<i>.  Stiles doesn't have a heartbeat, or a scent.</i></p><p><i>"I died," Stiles tells him, crossing his arms defensively.</i> (AU to 507 "Strange Frequencies": Theo did not save Stiles from his burning jeep.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Circle

**Author's Note:**

> Late for Halloween, but perhaps it's still All-Souls somewhere?

Derek snaps awake to see Stiles squatting next to his bed, face lit by the screen of Derek's phone, which Stiles slides into the back pocket of his jeans as he stands. Stiles takes three steps back and away, escaping nearly to the far wall, and then Derek's on his feet, claws out.

Derek's naked, but that's fucking _nothing_. Stiles is supposed to be in high school in a whole different country, and Derek knows riddles; he knows _When is a Stiles not a Stiles_. Stiles doesn't have a heartbeat, or a scent.

"I died," Stiles tells him, crossing his arms defensively. He's wearing a dirty gray shirt and faded jeans, and he shifts his weight from foot to foot. He looks exhausted. "I wanted to tell you, not have you get the news over the phone. That'd suck."

The door's too close to Stiles for Derek to risk it, but he could break the window over the desk and jump. The apartment's only on the fifth floor. He'd probably survive the fall. But Cora's spending the night at her girlfriend's and will probably crawl home at dawn. Derek hates to think of not being capable of protecting her from... this.

Stiles snorts; apparently Derek's panicked thought process is almost amusing. "There is literally no way I can prove to you that I'm me and not _him_ without summoning demon oni. It's not like he didn't get his dirty fingerprints over every memory in my head, you can't just ask me, like, where we met or what my locker combination is. I'd say _trust me_ except, dude, the last thing you should do is trust me. But I want you to listen. Call it my dying wish."

Derek shifts slowly towards the chair, grabs the jeans slung over the back, and pulls them on. He should run, but he can't. His own heartbeat is so loud it almost covers up the lack of another.

Stiles takes the phone out and hefts it in his hand for a moment before bending and sliding it across the floor. It stops short to the left of Derek's feet. He leaves it there.

"The jeep burned," Stiles says. "Flipped over and whoosh. I ended up on the ceiling in a puddle of gasoline, but either the head injury or the smoke did me in. I don't remember. One minute _flip_ , the next I'm ghosting around watching Raeken make sure I'm not breathing before pulling me out. He did a piss-poor attempt at CPR which involved punching in most of my ribs and then called 911. I kept trying to kick him in the head. Being immaterial sucks, F-Y-I." He pointed at the phone. "Scott's been calling."

"You seem material to me," Derek points out. The phone might be a trap, but what else can he do? He snatches it up. People he hasn't heard from in months have all called in the past two hours. Even Scott's mother.

"I wished with everything I had and ended up here." Stiles' shoulders twitch in a nervous shrug. "I freaked, okay? I know how dangerous it is when dead things _want_ , I do not want to go down that path, not even a little bit. I've been thinking, while debating waking you up... My theory is Deaton was never your emissary. He was saving himself for Scott, on some level. If you'd stayed an alpha, maybe after ten years and a lot of work it could have been me. Emissary. To you. We kind of bonded, you know? But you de-alpha'd and I, like, fucked up my soul, so that potential never got anywhere."

"That's stupid." Derek has to point this out, but he knows that, unfortunately, a lot of stupid shit also turns out to be true.

Stiles narrows his eyes like a challenge. "You think I _wanted_ to send myself here? I could have said goodbye to my dad. Christ." His mouth flattens, and one shaking hand comes up to press against his lips for a long moment.

Cora likes to call Derek's attention to his deficiencies, pointing out when someone's happy or angry or distraught and making blunt suggestions as to how Derek should respond to their feelings _like a real person_. Cora would tell Derek not to stand there and stare as Stiles imagines every painful scenario of his father getting the news. Hearing the call come in at work, maybe, or being woken up by one of his deputies. Maybe he'd been waiting up for Stiles to come home, cold worry in the pit of his stomach.

Someone should offer comfort, Derek thinks. Cora would tell him to give Stiles a hug, although she wouldn't ever stoop to doing so herself. She keeps Derek around because he's useful to her that way. Easily manipulated by his last surviving relative.

Stiles doesn't have that power over him, but Derek still feels grudgingly compelled. Not that he's going to take one step closer to whatever Stiles is now. 

When Stiles has calmed himself down, which seems to be harder when he can't control his (lack of) breathing, he jerks his shoulders back and stares Derek down. "I need to talk to the local emissary. You need to find out from Scott if I've been body-snatched. And then I want you to take me home."

Getting in his car with a ghost makes Derek's skin crawl, but Stiles occupies himself by scrawling notes and questions over a stack of envelopes he'd filched from the kitchen table. This comes in handy when they get to the emissary's office, because while she knows immediately that a spirit followed Derek in, she can't see or hear him. Derek discovers that he can't talk to Stiles in front of another person; it's like there's a glass wall that goes up between them.

"That's normal," the bruja tells him offhand, when Derek feels tendrils of cold panic start to unfurl.

"He was alive six hours ago," Derek manages to bite out. _Fuck_. "We were _friends_."

"I'm sorry for your loss," she says, and sounds sincere. But _her_ pack has never been slaughtered. Derek's has – twice. What does she know about his losses?

She's not irritatingly cryptic like Deaton, though. He trusts her. Derek explains about the nogitsune, repeats what Stiles told him about Theo Raeken and his fixation with that evil inside him, and goes over how Stiles wants to make sure his body and soul are one hundred percent dead. He reads off the notes about the Dread Doctors and the chimeras. He finally calls Scott, who says they found the burned-out jeep and a lot of blood, but Stiles himself (his body, Derek insists) is missing; Stiles shakes his head in firm negation, gnawing his fingernails to the quick. The bruja pulls ingredients out of cabinets and boxes, assembling bags and jars in a precise matrix on the table before numbering them with permanent marker. She types up the spell for him and prints it out when he says he doesn't know his email password.

Stiles set the email up and probably remembers, but Derek prefers having a piece of paper in his hand. Digital stuff never feels real.

The bruja is Facebook friends with members of the PNW Association of Druids (which Derek has never heard of, but it wouldn't be the first thing Deaton didn't share), and she's busy contacting them as Derek heads out, blinking; his eyes adjusted to the flickering florescent lights and so are dazzled by the midmorning sun.

He has his bag, his passport, and his US-government-issue travel card in the car already, so they hit the road. He's made the trip in less than 10 hours before, but Stiles orders him not to break any laws on the way.

The bruja repeated what Stiles had said about how ghosts should not desire – though she called the yearning _a hunger_. Stiles had grimaced at the word, so Derek guesses it's an accurate description. He's familiar with the devastation of grief: wanting to turn back time, wanting the death to be a lie, wanting the dead to come home and everything be the same again. Wanting to die to be with them, wanting to undo every action of his that caused the murders of those he loved.

His imagination provides a vivid sense of what being dead would feel like, how Stiles must be battling that hunger to be alive and see the people he loves again. If he knows Stiles – he likes to think he does – he's fixated more on how gutted his friends and his father are, not on his own pain. Which is probably worse. It must feel selfish, to know that his refusal to give in and _want_ his life back will grind his father's heart into dust.

So Derek's not going to add to Stiles' temptations by getting pulled over and detained by law enforcement. He gets over the border by telling the truth: sudden death of a close friend, going home for the funeral.

Stiles was worried about the spell ingredients and the drug-sniffing dogs, but one of the first things werewolves get taught when they start driving is how to keep their cars off the canine scent map. It's self-defense. Otherwise, every mutt in town would feel compelled to piss on the tires.

"You're in good hands," Derek tells Stiles as the border crossing behind them shrinks in the rear-view window. "I'll get you home. Relax. And keep your hands off the radio," he adds, as one drifts sneakily towards the buttons. "Driver picks the music."

"You're quoting a _hunter_ ," Stiles argues. "And listening to Taylor Swift. In what world does that make sense?"

They've had the _radio is dead_ argument enough times already; Derek's not doing that one last time for nostalgia's sake. He digs his phone out and tosses it over, and Stiles mutters under his breath as he hooks it up and tries to find a playlist that doesn't offend his sensibilities. Derek doesn't pay much attention to lyrics, usually. He just likes his music catchy, which as far as he knows is not a crime. He makes the mistake of saying so loud enough to be heard.

"Oh, yes it is," Stiles counters, finally settling for the girl band music Derek remembers his mom listening to. "Trust me, I know about the law."

" _Breaking_ the law." 

"I will sing along with every ABBA song you own, I swear to god."

Derek expects Stiles to make more empty threats (he barely has any ABBA, really), or segue into trivia or politics or the history of road signs, but instead he just leans his head against the window and closes his eyes.

Close to a hundred miles go by, painfully slow at exactly the speed limit and measured in Bananarama, Joan Jett, and Pat Benatar, before Stiles stretches and shoots Derek a sad, guilty look.

"Sorry," Stiles says, around the finger he's gnawing on. "Maybe it's because I'm free of weird brain chemistry for the first time, but I feel... still. And kind of dull. Like everything's getting further away."

"Don't worry about it." Derek frowns. The words don't sound right. "You're supposed to, like the witch said, pass on or whatever. Cross over."

Stiles shakes his head like Derek just doesn't _get_ it. "I killed a kid." Derek glances over. He's not surprised – the longer Stiles was involved, the likelier murder became – but he's sorry. He remembers how he felt the first time he got blood on his hands, scared sick and angry, and how young and naive Stiles had been when they first met. "I didn't mean to, but he was trying to kill me. Theo thought that was _awesome_. He'd always wanted a buddy to share his murder secrets with, the Bonnie to his Clyde or something. He's a better mindfucker than Peter, and I was trying to figure him out, learn what he knew about the Dread Doctors and the missing bodies, which meant I had to let him into my head. Try and game him without getting gamed. I was so freaking terrified."

"Makes sense," Derek offers. "After the nogitsune." He sees Stiles shudder and rub his arms, as if he'd broken out in goosebumps. He hopes Stiles hadn't been trying to do all that alone, but from what he gathers Scott's been busy with a new girlfriend and a new pack. He wonders whether Scott blamed Stiles for the kid's death. Scott's intentions aren't always appropriate, in Derek's experience, despite his basically good heart.

"That's what he wants. Kick good Stiles out of his body, and hope Mr Hyde appears."

"Won't happen." Stiles heard the witch explain the spell, and he knows... he _should_ know that Derek won't fuck it up.

"I've been wondering what monsters are, on and off, for a while now," Stiles says, reaching down to tap the phone irritably until it skips from Xanadu to Dirty Water. "Not just in an academic sense. The closest definition I've got so far is, a being whose way of thinking is both inhuman and hazardous to people and society in general. Though admittedly that also applies to bears and mountain lions. But the more a monster looks like just a person, the more frightening it is, because it's trying to trick or trap you."

"Gee, thanks."

Stiles flashes him a bright-eyed insincere grin. "Don't tell me you don't have your own working definition. Note that mine doesn't include you – fangs yes, but brain human in most of the right places – but covers Theo pretty well."

"You could just say _psychopath_ then," Derek points out.

"Except that apparently the supernatural exists, werewolves and druids and banshees oh my. A lot of modern monster theory assumes the legends were half origin story, half moral – birth defects and diseases exist because of evil, curses, possession, whatever. But when a kid with epilepsy and a born werewolf aren't naturally predisposed to psychopathy, but some completely human people _are_ – what does that mean?"

"You think evil's there from birth?" Derek shakes his head. "People get fucked up. Look far back enough in their history, there's usually something."

Stiles taps his fingertips against his legs in time with the music. "Maybe. But I don't get Theo, man."

"I never got Kate," Derek says without letting himself think.

Stiles makes a soft pained noise. "Okay," he says. "Yeah."

Another couple hundred miles go by.

Stiles keeps busy building a playlist; Derek's pretty sure he's downloading new music every time there's a strong enough signal. As long as it's got a good beat, Derek doesn't complain.

"I have a will," Stiles says abruptly. Derek flinches, but keeps from reflexively cracking the steering wheel. "Don't give me that. You know me. I've had one since I learned that my mom had one, when she was sick. I hated my mother the whole year before she died," Stiles continues, and there's a clinical tone to his voice that reminds Derek of the scar the nogitsune left across Stiles' stomach. Like Stiles is cutting himself open, just to see what happens. _Strife._ "I mean... I loved my mom. But she wasn't there any more. There was a woman who looked through me like I was nobody and told everyone I was trying to kill her. She didn't remember Saturday morning waffles or the stupid nicknames she used to call me." Stiles frowns hard. "I _like_ my real name. I don't know why Japanese-Korean or Hawaiian or Jewish kids get to have quote-unquote ethnic names and no one laughs at them, but the Polack kid's name is child abuse? So... people don't get to have nice things. Except you. You need to know how to say my name the right way so you can do the spell."

"It's going to be on your gravestone anyway," Derek points out, because apparently his default setting is to salt all open wounds. Plus he's annoyed at Stiles for making him mindful of the situation. If he can just shut his brain off from thinking about ghosts and murder and Stiles being dead sitting next to him, he can hang onto his sanity that much longer.

"I think that's part of why I never wanted to be a werewolf," Stiles says, as if the conversation is progressing logically. "Not being in control freaks me out. That's why the nogitsune gave me her disease, but on the bright side, _needing_ to know absolutely everything made me pretty useful to have around over the years." He reaches over and bumps his knuckles against Derek's shoulder, like bros. "So, my will, dude. Scott knows where it is. I'm going to have an _awesome_ gravestone, with _The Boy Who Lived_ right across the top, because I don't want people getting stupid about all the things I'm never going to do. I was fucking _alive_ , and I kicked ass and took names. Plus you can leave me butterbeer instead of flowers."

"Fat chance."

Stiles grins. "Rude. Especially since I'm leaving you some crap. Books and DVDs."

"I don't want your porn," Derek says quickly. Stiles doubles over laughing as if that's the funniest thing he's ever heard, and Derek is stupidly glad to have made him happy, even at his own expense.

When Stiles has recovered, wiping at his eyes like he expects them to be wet, he plays Centerfold and tries to get Derek to sing along – _does she walk, does she talk, does she come complete_.

"No, but really, I wanted to ask you," Stiles says, as soon as the nah-nahs have faded to an end, "if you could do me a favor. Not in return for some moldy occult books and my Die Hard collection, but... for me."

"Depends." Dead creatures like to ask for bargains and deals; Derek's not making any blind commitments. He's also never going to agree to give a speech or lead a prayer at whatever weird funeral Stiles has planned for himself. No way in hell.

"Take care of my dad." All of a sudden, Stiles sounds like he does in a fight. Broken and beaten, but resolved. Brave. "Make sure he eats, sleeps, doesn't get drunk off his ass. Just for the first few weeks. He's going to need someone to yell at – a lot – and he's going to hate getting caught crying, and he'll lie about how he's coping to get people off his back. He'll sit up all night holding a loaded gun, okay? I know these things. I've been there. He can't be alone. And you're literally the only person I can ask. _Beg_. This is me, begging. Please keep him alive."

The thought makes Derek's skin crawl. He wants to say no – hell, he could lie to Stiles and get away with it. But his mind tosses up the first time he met Stilinski, after the fire. He'd been kind to Derek and Laura, kept the reporters away, got them to the hospital and though the ordeal of talking to the police. He'd given them blankets and food and no stomach-turning platitudes.

"He doesn't even know me," Derek protests anyway. "He won't let me in the door."

Stiles twists in his seat, trying to face Derek but getting caught by the seat belt. Derek has no idea why he bothered; a belt's not going to save Stiles' life at this point. "Please. _Please_."

"Yeah," Derek says, because he's an idiot, and because his eyes are burning, and because at the end of the road somewhere is Stiles' dirty, charred, lifeless body.

"Thank you," Stiles whispers. He reaches over and takes Derek's hand, weaving their fingers together like a pinky-swear times five. Derek can't feel any warmth off his hand, just faint pressure, but it's comforting.

Then Stiles starts to talk.

*

Derek texts Scott when he's just outside Beacon Hills. Stiles' body still hasn't turned up, even though everyone's out looking. Scott refuses to believe that he's dead, but Stiles shrugs and says that's just how he is.

Stiles is annoyed that there's not a body, for closure, but after discussion he agreed with Derek that it's better to do the spell as soon as possible. They can use Stiles' hair and dirty clothes, in the safety of his room, and avoid the risk of encountering chimeras or Dread Doctors. The spell's infallible; a fight they could – would probably – lose.

Derek parks down by the jogging trail and walks back to Stiles' house, senses on full alert. He goes around the side and finds the fake rock. The combination Stiles tells him gets him the key, and then he's inside, his heart beating too fast, even though he's not in danger. Something like this is a cakewalk.

Stiles sits on his bed and watches Derek set all the ingredients up on the floor. He draws the circle and the runes, lights the candles, and sprinkles out the herbs and _physical components_ , then double checks everything with the bruja's printout. Just before the chanting part, Derek takes a deep breath and says, "I liked having you in my pack. You were a good friend. Loyal. I should have – "

"Nope, none of that," Stiles says. He gets up to give Derek a long shaky hug, that Derek returns as hard as he can. It still won't leave Stiles breathless. "I don't believe in an afterlife," Stiles says, voice soft by Derek's ear. "But if I'm wrong, I'll give everyone your love." He steps back, slipping gently out of Derek's arms and watching his feet, careful not to knock anything over. Once out of the circle, he meets Derek's eyes and says, "Find happiness."

When he sits down again, his broad shoulders are hunched inwards, like he's holding on to the feeling of the hug, his last human contact.

"You, too." Derek swallows; it's a ridiculous sentiment, under the circumstances. But Stiles smiles, sweet and sad, and Derek starts reciting the words. He can feel the magic build, and after a bit he can even see it, sparks of light in the corners of his vision. There's a kind of pull, a deep tremor he feels through his boots every time he repeats Stiles' real name, and when he looks at Stiles he can see tendrils of wrongness pulling out from his spirit, anchoring him to his body. The spell unravels them, one by one, and as soon as Stiles is free he disappears, as if he'd never been there at all.

Derek got all of Stiles' last moments, but he's selfish; he still wishes he'd had one more. He cleans up the room – the bruja was very clear about how the spell had to be dismantled properly – and goes to wash his face in the upstairs bathroom. The bath towel smells like Stiles' soap and shampoo; Derek's face in the mirror looks haunted.

He goes downstairs and turns on the lights, opens the refrigerator. All the dinner ingredients are there, just like Stiles told him, so he gets to work. He's not a great cook, but he likes being occupied. He spends ten minutes just hunting down spices and a baking pan, and another five figuring out how to turn the oven on. He nearly burns a bunch of pots that someone stuck in the oven to dry. He has a vague memory of his mother doing the same.

Stilinski comes home at seven, because apparently he doesn't do everything Scott tells him to. Or maybe Scott didn't pass on Derek's message.

"Get out of my house," is the first thing he says, and then he turns terrible eyes on Derek, who's scrubbing the sink for lack of better things to do. "Where is my son?" He's terrified and desperate, in uniform and carrying a gun. Derek can smell wolfsbane.

"He was killed last night," Derek says, putting down the sponge and wiping his hands on his jeans, keeping his movements slow and non-threatening. "A guy named Theo wanted to bring the nogitsune back. That won't happen," he adds, responding to the way Stilinski sways on his feet. "Stiles came to me, he never wanted to be anything but human even if that meant... I promised." His voice trails off; he doesn't know how to explain.

"The FBI let me know when you crossed the border this morning," Stilinski tells him. Anger permeates the words.

"Stiles came to me," Derek repeats. He puts his hands on the countertop and presses down to ground himself. "He told me to make you dinner. He told me it didn't hurt. He didn't let me speed or I'd have been here sooner. He said he loved you. He said I'd know what to say to you, but I don't."

"I don't believe you." Derek can hear Stilinski's breathing speed up. "You hear me? Until I see his body, _my son isn't dead_."

"Then I'll find him for you." Derek glances over and sees Stilinski still as stone, as if he's forcing himself not to shake to pieces. "If that's what you want."

"I want my boy home safe, you son of a _bitch_ ," Stilinski shouts, and Derek swears he can see him start to believe against his will, despite the way his heart yearns for everything to be fine.

"Your dinner's in the oven," Derek says, because he's lost, cold like the grave, and it's not all right, he's not okay. But that's never mattered before, has it, so he goes and gets the plate out, puts it on the table, ignores the sudden salt smell of tears.

He'll do as he promised. He doesn't know how to do anything else.


End file.
